Mudblood
by manic ayla
Summary: "They didn't hate each other, and even if they had, this stuffy classroom was no place for it. Lily's face in his shoulder and James's arms slowly coming up around her shoulders was no place for it." A lot changes after Lily and James' fifth year- old enemies grow more hateful, new and unexpected friendships blossom from the rifts in old ones, and maybe somewhere in there, romance.
1. The Beginning

_A/N: This is my first Harry Potter fanfiction, and my first fic period in a very, very long time. So... don't hate.__Disclaimer: Everything is the property of Jo Ro and her many wonderful publishers, etc._

_Chapter One, the Beginning_

"Mudblood."

Lily stormed away from the mob of fifth years. Her initial shock quickly wore off as she pushed her way through them, lips pursed and trying to hide her shaking hands even as she used them to part the sea of people who had just seen her heart break. Utter devastation took its place. Dimly, before she forced herself to push the thoughts back, she realised that her life had just changed dramatically. _Fuck, stop thinking, Lily._

"Mudblood."

_How could he?_

Lily gasped raggedly. She couldn't help it. Her body wasn't working correctly. Her lungs were frozen and the muggy June air wasn't defrosting them. Her feet tripped over each other as she hurried across the uneven grassy lawn. She was halfway to the castle. Sure that someone was still watching her walk away (_Is Sev? Oh dammit. No._) Lily kept her back resolutely straight. She crossed her arms, holding them painfully tight against her ribs. _Stop shaking, _she ordered herself.

But who was she kidding? She had absolutely no control over herself anymore.

Lily realised that thought with the rough wood of the castle doors against her hands as she pulled them open. Overcome and unwilling to fight it, Lily let out another sob. A small group of younger students in the Great Hall looked up at her, but their faces didn't register. Terrified of the tears she felt burning her eyes, she ran clumsily up the main staircase.

By the time she reached the landing, Lily's vision was blurred past the point of being able to call it vision, and her entire body was shaking. Stumbling forward, she guided herself by memory. She slammed carelessly into the nearest unused classroom and, trying to call up even a little bit of anger, Lily slammed the door shut as hard as she could. Anger would be so much simpler than this, this helplessness. The pure agony of betrayal. Immediately, she collapsed against the abused door and slid to the floor. She wasn't angry. Not even a little. Pretending to be anything other than totally devastated was laughably outside her realm of possibility.

Lily lost herself. She curled her legs up and braced her elbows on them as she sobbed into her hands. The scary, broken wails echoed softly off the stone walls and came back to hit her all over again, just like the one word that her mind was mercilessly replaying to her, over and over again. _Mudblood. _She wasn't even thinking. She was just falling apart.

Suddenly, the doorknob just above her head rattled. Instantly, Lily was terrified that her best friend had come after her. _But he's not your best friend anymore. _Another violent, involuntary cry fell from her lips, even as reason told her that it would be one of her friends. Not Sev. But she didn't want to see them either. Scrambling, she twisted around onto her knees, reaching up to lock the door. Before her fingers could touch the brass though, the door pushed open.

Still shaking madly, Lily pushed herself off the floor and turned away from whichever of her dorm mates had just come in. "Go away!" She tried to sound forceful but her voice was wet, and it shook, and everything about it begged for comfort, even though she insisted to herself that was the last thing she wanted or needed. No one could possibly comfort her.

The voice that replied was the only one that she hadn't anticipated hearing.

"Lily... Lily, please."

It was James Potter.

Immediately, Lily sucked in a breath to prepare herself for the force of her own anger. But as she braced herself against a desk, wiping her eyes and trying desperately to stop her tears, she realised that she wasn't. There was no part of her whole enough to be angry anymore.

She made herself look at him. A dim part of her shrieked that this was _his _fault, but it wasn't, and she knew it. Sev had chosen that word, not James. All the same, his face hurt to look at. She could barely glance at him before tears welled up hotly again and took away all the details of his appearance. He was just a blur of nearly-tanned skin with a slop of black on top of it. She didn't take in his wide eyes, his pulled at hair, or the odd shape that his mouth was hanging open in. His mixed expression of shock, pain, and regret didn't sink in. She could think of no words to say and, for several moments, it seemed that neither could her new companion.

James was frozen. He felt his stomach twist painfully as he watched Lily collapse against a dust covered desk. He saw the manic trembling of her hands as she tried to hide her red, blotchy face. Her entire body shook and James had no. idea. what. to. do. He'd known that she would be crying, but he hadn't prepared himself for the sight that he was now faced with. It was so… _violent._

How was he supposed to make this better? All his previous knowledge told him that if he touched her, she would slap him. But the anguish in her slumped, quivering shoulders broke him, and he couldn't _not _try to comfort her.

Cautiously, James moved closer. He snapped his mouth shut and braced himself for her physical reaction. Lightly, he put a hand on her shoulder. "Lily?"

Still, she wasn't thinking. She didn't hear how scared and desperate James's voice was saying her name, and she didn't really know if she'd consciously made the decision to jut her upper body forward into his. All she knew at that moment, even if just subconsciously, was that their history didn't matter. Their animosity was so unthinkably petty right then that they both realised pointlessness of it. They didn't hate each other, and even if they had, this stuffy classroom was no place for it. Lily's face in his shoulder and James's arms slowly coming up around her shoulders was no place for it. It didn't matter who they were, or who they had been, because both of them were now irrevocably different than who they had been an hour ago. Parts of both of them recognized this fact, but for the most part they just didn't know what to do, so they let the moment happen.

Frantically, Lily tried to stop her crying. "James," she sobbed brokenly, not bothering with the pretense of surnames, "I- I can't. He- how could- _my best friend!"_ Her words were barely intelligible, not to mention the fact that she was at a complete loss to form them into coherant sentences. But James hardly needed her to tell him what was wrong.

He had never felt so guilty in his entire life.

"I am so, _so _sorry, Lily."

This time she _did_ pick up on the earnestness in his voice, and it confused her. The flow of her tears slowed infinitesimally. Lily pulled back slightly and instantly James withdrew his arms from around her. "I'm sorry," he repeated, this time for the offense of touching her. He was so frustrated: with what he had done, with his horrible stupidity, with his complete ineptitude at dealing with the _one _person that he would have done anything to make laugh at this moment. Laughing, even if it was just for a second, was _not _crying, and all he wanted was for Lily to stop crying. For her to stop hurting.

He knew how foolish this was, but he still wanted it. He racked his brain for any idea of how to make up for the last 30 minutes. _If I wasn't such an arrogant prat, _he berated himself as her insults out on the lawn reverberated through his brain.

She was crying because of him. _God, I can't believe how badly I've just fucked this up. _Inwardly, James cursed himself and everything that had made him that way. Inexpressible disbelief colored his thoughts. Out of habit, James pulled a hand through his already disheveled hair. He opened his mouth to say something—Jesus, anything—but Lily was shaking her head.

"Don't," was the only thing she said. Then, surprising both of them, but infinitely more so James, she pushed herself away from the grimy desk and back against his chest.

By instinct, he hugged her back. Tightly, because God knows, he thought, the next time she would allow him to be near her. When she was back in the right mind, everything about him would disgust her again, just like it had for the last five-

James cut that tired line of thought short. This was not about him. If he didn't manage to make everything he saw about him, Lily would not be standing here, frazzled hair and leaking eyes, in his arms in a dingy classroom on the second floor. He couldn't believe himself. He didn't even want to _think_ about himself.

So instead, he focused all of his attention on Lily. Her forehead was pressed against his shoulder and she was still crying. The horrible sobbing had stopped, but James could still feel her shoulders shaking and the warm plop of tears on his t-shirt every few seconds. Her arms were bent at the elbow between them, resting on his chest as she breathed heavily. James moved his hands up and down her back, pressing her firmly to him in such a thoroughly friendly and unromantic way that they were both a little surprised. But the longer they stood there, the calmer Lily seemed to become, so James didn't stop.

When her tears had finally dwindled to a manageable pace, Lily sighed. She continued to concentrate on the warm, comforting movement of James's hands over her back. His hands were warm and they worked to sooth some of the tension that locked down Lily's frame, moving smoothly up to her shoulder blades and then back down, continually overrunning that path of the other hand but never going too low. As her facilities came back to her and she was able to think about more than… more than one thing, that is, she was thoroughly surprised at the position she found herself in.

She was even more surprised when she recognized that she enjoyed it.

With her sigh, James pulled back, but just barely. He rested his forearms on her shoulders as he looked her in the eye, the most somber expression on his face that Lily could ever remember seeing. She didn't think to remove her hands from his chest.

"Are you..." James started, but of course that was a stupid question. Of course she wasn't okay. "Are you going to be alright?" he finished. His voice was careful, and so sincere that, once again, she was surprised that she was standing here with _James Potter, _of all people. Casually though, as she saw the vague outline of her red hair reflected in his glasses, she scolded herself. This is the same person, you dolt. You just haven't seen this bit before, she thought.

Sniffling, Lily shrugged and brought one hand up to wipe at her face. Her voice was still unsteady as she answered. "I don't know," she said helplessly, and once again the tears threatened to overwhelm her. But James saw them glistening and, with a pang of his own, he pulled her back to him. She hugged him more fully this time, her arms circling his waist as one hand delved into her flyaway hair and pressed her into his shoulder again.

"It'll be okay," he whispered. "I promise."

And for some reason, despite years and years of knee-jerk reactions and second-guessing even his most obviously truthful statements, Lily believed him. She tried to think of why and startled herself when she named what was different in this moment: James Potter felt safe. Despite her complete and utter breakdown, he made her feel able to handle whatever might get thrown at her.

She squeezed her arms around him tighter.

After another long minute or two of embrace, they both started to loosen their grasp on the other. Just before he pulled away, without thinking about it, James dropped a soft kiss into the hair just above Lily's ear. Upon realising what he had just done, both parties stilled. _You fucking idiot,_ James thought to himself. _You _had _to, didn't you? Fucking hell…_

Lily, however, had no such negative thoughts. For part of a second she was confused, but she knew that she had no room left for her to be confused, so she let it go. She would not fight with him, or however it was that she might have normally reacted if he kissed her so casually. Instead, she tightened her arms just a tiny bit and pressed her own soft, chaste kiss into the crook of his neck. James stopped mid-breath.

Not noticing, Lily delicately stepped out of James's embrace and he let his arms fall limply back to his sides. He tried to reign in the nervous confusion he was feeling now as Lily looked shyly up at him. He assumed that he'd succeeded when she gave him a weak smile. Weak, but sure. James allowed himself to breathe again and both of the Gryffindors turned to the door.

Sedately, both of them stepped back into the corridor. Lily wasn't sure how much time had passed, but she felt sure that when she looked at a clock, she would feel it had been either much longer or much shorter than it actually proved. When she caught glimpse of the darkening sky through a high window a few minutes later, she decided that it felt much shorter.

The two walked slowly in the direction of Gryffindor tower, their bodies much closer than Lily would usually allow. James wondered if she noticed. He certainly did. The seemingly sudden lateness of the hour had not passed him either, and he worriedly wondered if he had been _reveling _in being alone with Lily, even if she was crying. He didn't think he had been, and it certainly hadn't felt like it in that classroom, but it seemed quite like something he would do, he thought. Then, he wondered why he thought that. Nothing occurred to him, but he continued to puzzle over it as they turned into the seventh floor corridor leading to their Common Room, the self-deprecating tone still in his thoughts.

Abruptly, Lily stopped. James walked a step or two further before realising and turning back to look at her. She looked like hell, James realised, but she was also very beautiful. She held up no pretenses here, with her uniform wrinkled and her eyes bloodshot. She suddenly looked very embarrassed.

"You haven't got to be embarrassed, Evans." His voice was reassuring, but Lily smiled weakly again and shook her head.

"I know. I'm just, going to go clean myself up." She gestured to a girls' loo that they were just about to pass and James nodded. "I'd rather not go in looking like…" she paused, not sure what she didn't want to look like, so James finished for her.

"Looking like you just cried into the shoulder of probably the one bloke you've ever hated in your life?" he suggested, and Lily chuckled, surprising them both once again.

"Yeah," she said, "I supposed that's what I meant."

James nodded a second time and, completely unsure of what goodbye he ought to give, began to turn away without one. Lily, with an unbidden surge of guilt, took a swift step forward to stop him. Her thin fingers gripping his elbow, she tried to correct him. "Potter, I don't really-"

He swung around at her touch and her words stuttered to a stop when she found herself much closer to him that she was expecting. James's eyes flickered with surprised at the proximity, but he didn't move back. They stared at each other for a long moment before Lily realised that he was waiting for her to continue. Falteringly, she did.

"I never… What I'm saying is that I never _really _hated you, Potter. You- You ought to know that."

Her voice sounded mildly unsure despite the truth of her statement, and James raised his eyebrows at her. Not mocking her, but surprised that their walk had taken this route. Lily swallowed. Maybe she should have just let him walk away. They both stayed there though, and after a moment the motherly side of Lily's brain kicked in. _Okay, get along then. Don't just stand here._

Before she started to walk away though, Lily shifted imperceptibly closer and, blinking very, very slowly, looked at James directly again. "Thank you," she breathed faintly, and then, blushing, stepped past him and shuffled into the loo. When she walked away she let her hand fall from his elbow in a way that was just barely unnatural, so that her fingertips grazed the inside of his hand before she continued on. The tingling trail remained on his hand as he blankly watched her walk away.

James didn't move until several moments after the door had swung shut behind her. He simply watched her retreat, lips slightly parted, not entirely sure exactly what the fuck had just happened, and even less sure why it felt like things had just changed between them, _again. _Blinking himself back to reality, James continued down the corridor, rubbing his right hand with his left, fingering the trail that Lily had left on his palm.

_A/N: I hope you liked it. I published this legitimately right after I finished writing it, so if there are little mistake then please forgive me. Let me know what you think, how I could improve it, all of that. Thanks. :)_


	2. Thinking Too Much

_Disclaimer: Everything is the property of Jo Ro and her many wonderful publishers, etc._

_Chapter 2, Thinking Too Much_

Lily's summer had gone by in the same way as the weather had. Outside it was hot, oppressively humid, and bitterly windy. It had been that way, with very few breaks, for nearly two months, and it was in no way helping Lily escape the melancholic feeling that had been haunting her ever since she came home from school.

The last two weeks the year had been uneventful. Lily spent time with her friends out on the grounds—but never near the lake, and not talking nearly as much as she usually did. In the days after her... _confrontation_… with Severus, several people had approached her and asked if she was okay. She said yes, and for the most part she acted okay. The only people who knew that she wasn't were her dorm mates.

After she had left James in the hallway, she spent a long time in the girls room sorting herself out. Mostly, she splashed lots and lots of cold water on her face, rearranged her hair and clothing, and forced her lungs to draw in long, deep breaths that they clearly didn't want to take. She stayed in the loo, staring at herself in the mirror and practicing keeping her expression blank, until all the redness had left her cheeks and her eyes had de-puffed a bit. Then, she walked determinedly the rest of the way to Gryffindor Tower, through the portrait hole, and right up the stairs to her dormitory, where she immediately crawled into bed and forced herself to asleep.

Eventually she let herself be sat down and given a pep talk. She knew it was coming when her three roommates surrounded her en masse and led her upstairs. They sat around Lily on her bed with consoling but somehow stern expressions. It was just before breakfast on the last day of exams when the group sat her down.

"Lily," Marlene started gently. "It's been three days."

"And in that time, you've probably said as many words," added Lori Crossmark.

"We're just… we're really worried about you, Lil," finished Mary. It all sounded very rehearsed.

But Lily could hear the concern in their voices and felt immediately guilty for ignoring their attempts to question her. Lori was right; she had been working hard to avoiding talking to them about what happened after the scene at the lake. Not because she didn't want to talk to them about it, but because she just _didn't want to talk about it._ At all. To anyone. Thinking about it was bad enough, and that she could hardly stop herself from doing. But still, she thought. Lord knew that Lily would not have waited three days to sit them down if they'd been keeping quiet about something like this.

"I'm sorry, you guys," Lily sighed, looking down morosely at the dirty beige carpet. Her voice was heavy with sadness and guilt. She sounded utterly helpless, and she felt it, too. Her friends moved closer, Marlene putting one hand on her knee as Lori wrapped one arm tightly around Lily's shoulders.

"You don't have to be sorry, love," Lori said softly. "We just want to know that you're okay. You haven't talked to any of us about… what that git said to you… and we know that you're upset."

Marlene sounded indignant on Lily's behalf. "And you've got every right to be."

"What he said to you was absolutely disgusting…" Lori said, half a sneer hidden in her sweet voice.

"And we know how you are with him," Mary added. Lily's heart rate was starting to pick up and she groaned silently at how painful the topic actually was, and hearing her friends talk about it. Mary and Marlene sounded so sorry for her, and their pity made Lily's skin crawl. She didn't want to be pitied, even if she was acting pitiful. And Lori sounded so offended and angry, like she was making up for the emotions that Lily ought to be feeling. Although part of Lily was angry, and more than a little offended, the rest of her simply felt overwhelmingly hurt and betrayed.

"I'm just… We're _so sorry _to be proven right," Marlene admitted.

Lily dropped her head into her hands. She was so ashamed; ashamed of how she'd been embarrassed in front of her whole year, ashamed of how wrong she had been, ashamed that she was so heartbroken over someone who obviously didn't care for her the way she thought he had, ashamed that she was so weak. Ashamed because of all the reasons she had to be ashamed.

"I'm sorry," Lily repeated through her hands, hoping that none of her roommates picked up on the small quiver in her voice. "But I can't do this. I love you guys, and thank you, and I promise that I will be fine and stop ignoring you. But I really, _really_ can't talk about this. I just can't."

Despite her efforts, by the end of her promises the creaking in Lily's voice was unmistakable. The three girls exchanged sad looks over her head before patting her shoulders or her knees and murmuring quietly that that was fine. Lily dabbed at her damp eyes and smiled at her friends before going into the bathroom to fix her make-up for breakfast.

After that Lily talked more, but never about anything much deeper than lessons and how nice it was now that the sun was out and how glad they were that school was ending. She sat her last exam, feeling shaky at best, because who knew what that last plant she was supposed to have identified for Herbology was, and then it was all over.

The last days were spent lying in the sun with her friends with her robes lying on the ground beneath her, and sometimes a book. She forced herself to laugh and be cheerful, and sometimes it wasn't so hard, if she managed to push all thoughts of the events that were plaguing her out of mind. She attended the End of Term feast, clapping and cheering with enough enthusiasm that no one around her questioned it. The she packed, she tramped down to Hogsmeade, she rode the train, she said her goodbyes, and she rode silently in Petunia's fiancée's car until they were home, where she greeted her father with the first bit of real happiness she had felt in a week, before saying that she'd had a very, very long journey and headed up to her room.

Where she had, for the vast majority of her time, stayed for the last two months.

She knew that moping around in her room probably was not the best thing for her. And she didn't _always._ (She was very defensive on this point when she considered herself recently.) In fact, she had been to visit Lori three times, and Mary and Marlene each once. Then, just last week she had met up with the three of them in Diagon Alley to get their new school things.

She had also kept in touch with Harlow Bawtry from Ravenclaw and Alice Fortescue, who was a year above her. Mostly their letters contained idle chit chat and tales of her friends' holiday adventures, but Lily decided that they still counted. Her letters were usually much shorter than the ones she received, however, as she had very little to get up to.

This was another reason that Lily had scarcely left home. Unless she made plans ahead of time and travelled to meet her friends, there was nothing for her to do outside of her house. Not that there was much to do _inside_ it, either, but at least being inside meant she didn't have to worry about running into Snape.

It felt weird calling him 'Snape' after all this time, Lil mused. She was still getting used to it. She was lying on her bed, a potions book abandoned and about to fall off the edge beside her, thinking. Both her window and her door were thrown open in an attempt to draw a breeze through to lift the sweltering air away from her. She was wearing just a thin pair of cotton shorts and a t-shirt, but she still found herself so smothered by the heat that it was difficult to move from her bed.

This was probably the reason she'd been so thoughtful all summer, Lily decided. The stagnant heat in the air did not lend itself well to lightheartedness or fun. Instead, it prompted long hours stretched out on a bed, or a couch, or a porch swing, or the grass in the back yard, thinking about anything and everything the Lily felt she really ought not have been thinking about, the main one being Snape.

He'd been writing to her constantly all summer, which she cited as an excuse for being unable to go any length of time without her mind straying to him. She never opened his letters, but instead took them begrudgingly from a dark brown short-eared owl that she recognized as his and rolled them open just so that she could press the lot of them into a single stack on her dresser. Some letters were very, very long and others very short, but although Lily often found herself curious, she was determined not to read them after the first one—the only one at which she had even looked—made her cry for a solid hour the second day of break.

The only good thing that had come from her inability to stop thinking was the fact that she didn't cringe every time she thought about him anymore. She could think his name, she could think about what he'd done. It was harder to think about what she'd lost—the them from when they were little, before Hogwarts, before Slytherin and Gryffindor, before the Dark Arts and everything else had come between them.

And being able to remember what he'd done without flinching made it easy for Lily to be angry. It made it easy for her to not look at his letters. It made it even easier not to return them, and it made it easy for a small part of her to sadistically revel in the fact that he was probably dying for her to do just that. It made it easy to be okay when she talked to her friends, and even when she was at home. She was still hurting, but now it was tempered by anger. Lily was good at anger.

Something Lily was not good at—very not good at, for a matter of fact—was being unsure. Which is precisely how she felt about the other thing that her mind had been circling her many long days at home: James Potter.

She was unsure about everything in connection to James Potter.

She is unsure what exactly had happened between them, and why she reacted the way she did. She hadn't consciously thought about letting him comfort her, but she _had_ let him comfort her, had let him hold her in his arms and stroke her hair and _kiss _her _head. _She had been so out of herself that she had just _done _without thinking. And she kissed him back… Sure, they weren't real kisses and they had been completely platonic (she thought), but the knowledge the James Potter's lips had touched her hair and hers had touched his skin left her reeling, and she did not enjoy the feeling.

She didn't know how to feel about it all, or how she _should _feel. The more she tried to figure it out, the more her thoughts swirled messily, so for the most part she tried not to go into it. She didn't know how her attitude toward him had changed so much so quickly. It was bewildering, just like every other thought her mind had been stuck on this summer.

She was very, very, very unsure how she felt about him at the moment. Not in the sense that she fancied him, but in the sense that she didn't sputter with irritation when she thought of him anymore, and that was extraordinarily confusing to her. She wasn't convinced that she liked him, either as a friend or as a classmate, but as it turns out it's rather difficult to think about someone that let you cry on their shoulder and comforted you when you could have easily looked up and blamed them for your tears, and hate them. And when it came to James Potter, for whom she had never had any sort of positive or even ambivalent feeling before, she wasn't sure what else she was capable of feeling towards him.

Which is why, she told herself, she had been thinking about their last encounter so often. (She had studiously avoided him for the remainder of school, a feat she was proud of because he was usually bloody everywhere.)

She used the continuation of this train of thought to justify her almost obsessive worry over their _next _encounter.

She was dreading seeing him again, mainly because she didn't know how he was going to act and the lack of knowledge drove her up a wall. She had decided that there were three possibilities, and she wasn't sure if she liked any of them.

He would either go right back to normal (aka being a prat) and ask her out, possibly using her breakdown as leverage to get her to say yes, and then she will feel like an idiot for thinking that he might not be so bad for having treated her like an actual human being, and moreso for telling him as much. Or, he'd look at her like some fragile little schoolgirl that can't handle her own emotions and he'd think she's weak, which, while she would rather prefer that he didn't think about her at all, she doesn't want to be seen in that light _either. _Or, because of her careless, overwrought emotional words, he would think that they are someone now friends.

This last possibility is the one that Lily was most anxious over: she didn't want to be friends with James Potter. She hardly wanted to be friends with anyone at the moment. She didn't feel stable enough for it. Trying to write letters to Lori or Alice and sound happy, like she wasn't wasting her summer away, was hard enough. The prospect of having to see Potter on the train on September 1st was unthinkably agitating. Like she said, she wasn't stable enough for friendships right now.

She was too lonely.

Which was backward logic, but there it was. Lily sighed heavily and ran a hand restlessly across her bedspread. Her hair was sticking to her neck. She was lonely. That's what the problem with this summer was. She couldn't remember ever feeling this lonely. Growing up she had always had Petunia. And losing Petunia only came after she found another playmate, another best friend.

Lily tried to ignore the pang in her stomach when she accidentally thought of him as her best friend. He certainly wasn't anymore… This was the longest she'd gone without seeing or talking to Severus since she was nine years old. It was the first holiday since they'd met that she wasn't at the park between their houses close to every day, staying as long as she could there just to not be alone.

Her thoughts always came back full circle to this. It was like her mind didn't know any other shapes. It was beyond frustrating, Lily didn't want to keep doing it, didn't want to keep spinning around the same thoughts and never thinking anything new.

So, instead, she shook herself out and went downstairs to strike up a game of cards with her father, thinking as she went that she really needed to stop thinking about all these things and sort herself out. School started in a week and a half, after all. She was desperate to get back to normal, and to get back to Hogwarts.

_A/N: This chapter is very slow and takes place virtually all inside Lily's head, I know. I'm sorry. I hardly have the right to call it a chapter, because nothing happened. I was trying to incorporate more into it but it just didn't happen. I wanted to get out how she was feeling though, and I think that this is a pretty believable picture of what she would be thinking. Lily's POV is out of the way though, and that only leaves room for one thing, yeah? :D_

_Sorry if it was so dull. I will try to get the next chapter written and up sooner rather than later, and get more action and things that matter into it. Thank you for reading._


	3. King's Cross and Nerves

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Everything is the property of Jo Ro and her many wonderful publishers, etc._

_A/N: I'm sorry! Begging for mercy will occur at the end of the chapter._

_Chapter 3, King's Cross and Nerves_

True to form, James had not spent his summer fretting over Lily. At least, he fretted no more than usual over her. He'd been far too busy to let his mind drift in that direction for any real length of time, even when he tried to let it.

Right now was one the times that he was trying to, but life kept interrupting him. Even with just how dull it was.

"Oi, Prongs! Get. Off. Your. Arse." Sirius sat up, leaning forward in his cushy blue armchair in the Potters' sitting room to get better aim, and lobbed an old, beat up red Quaffle at James. Caught off guard (as Sirius knew he would be), James didn't even attempt to block it, and the ball hit him solidly in the stomach, knocking to breath out of him. But neither Sirius' expression nor his tone changed as James gasped and swore. "I'm bored," he told his friend.

"And just why exactly is that my bloody problem?" James demanded, clutching his abdomen and throwing the offending Quaffle violently back in Sirius' direction. Sirius ducked it easily and smiled, enjoying the annoyed look on his best friend's face.

"Because we are at _your _house, mate. You're not supposed to let your friends be bored at _your _house."

James rolled his eyes. "Padfoot, you have been here for _seven weeks. _It is your house now too, for Merlin's sake. I am not obligated to keep you entertained."

Sirius pulled a face, pouting, but quickly broke into a wide smile. "You're a horrible host," he joked.

"I'm pretty sure it stops being 'hosting' after the first week or so," James said. "After that it's just 'oh look, this prat still hasn't left. Guess he's living here now' and you go from house guest to roommate."

"Don't act like you're not glad I'm here."

"Don't act like _you're _not glad you're here."

"I'm not. I'm acting like I'm so bored my face is about to melt."

"You are so melodramatic."

"I am not!" Sirius insisted. "It is the last day of summer hols and we are just _sitting _here. You're already _packed,_ for Merlin's sake. It's pathetic."

James chuckled and nodded, because it was true and Sirius was right: it was rather pathetic. He rolled off his back so that he was sitting properly on the velvet couch and ran a hand through his hair. He looked around his sitting room with fake thoughtfulness.

"Maybe we're losing our edge," he lamented.

"Like you two ever had an edge to begin with," said a soft, slightly melodic voice behind them. They both turned slightly towards the door and raised their eyebrows at the casually elegant Margaret Potter, who stood smirking in the doorway. "You are softest boys I have ever known."

"You must hang with a really rough crowd then, Mum," James quipped.

"Unspeakables, a bunch of blokes from Azkaban… I can see it," Sirius agreed. All three wore smirks and amused twinkles in their eyes.

"Anyone else is insufferably boring!" James' mother declared haughtily, turning her nose up to the ceiling. She was only able to keep it up for a moment though, before a smile broke across her face and she looked down happily at the two boys she had introduced to a Ministry friend yesterday as her sons. The two boys smiled back at her.

"Honestly, though, what are you two doing with yourselves? I haven't seen you stay this still and quiet all summer. Your father and I were worrying about some big last hurrah for the past fortnight. And now you're just sitting here." There was an amused tone in Mrs. Potter's voice, one that might have sounded mocking, but there was a squint in her eyes that said she was honestly curious.

Sirius raised his eyebrows at his adoptive mother. "Did you _want _us to have some big last hurrah?"

"I'm sure we could think of something," James added.

"I mean, if you're that concerned about it."

"Actually…" Mrs. Potter looked thoughtfully into a space between them and brought her fingertips to her lips to cover the smile that was forming there. She pretended not to hear their banter. "Actually, I've just thought of something _for _you boys." She glanced at both of them and her smirk grew past the possibility of hiding it. At the sight of the same mischievous grin James often wore, the two boys felt the smiles fall from their faces, and they looked at each other with sudden trepidation.

Two hours later, James and Sirius were on their knees in a muddy patch of the Potter family garden, up to their elbows in dirt, picking vegetables.

"This still feels an awful lot like punishment to me," James complained, digging at the ground for a carrot to pull it out.

"Right? Like she couldn't have Summoned all the vegetables herself and picked the ones she liked best from the lot." Sirius didn't sound quite as bitter as James did, but he finished his statement by violently yanking a carrot of his own out of the dirt, completely separating the green from the top.

"Or, you know, let _us_ do it by magic."

Sirius nodded at the ground, but didn't respond as he picked up the two pieces of destroyed carrot and tried to reattach them with some soil and a bit of spit. James went back to picking and sorting the vegetables in front of them too. It was true, you could only repeat the same complaints about the same things for so long. As a bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck, James sighed and hoped that his mum would come outside soon and be satisfied with the amount of garden they had torn up for her, and let them come back in.

However, as the two dark-haired boys continued to push the dirt around and pull veggies from it with the enthusiasm of pulling their own teeth, he was surprised by how much he enjoyed the silence. It was different from sitting in the front room with nothing to do, because there was no restless pressure in the air. They were doing something, but it was such a mindless task and the air pressing in on him was so warm and humid, he found it hard to stay focused on what was in front of him. His mind wandered, and he started thinking about tomorrow.

He was excited to go back to school. He may not have been entirely thrilled to return to lessons, and inevitably detention, but class was manageable, and the rest of life at Hogwarts more than justified going to class every once in a while. Hell, the train ride there probably justified going the first term by itself.

As this thought flitted through James' mind, he felt the very corner edges of his mouth turn up as he thought about the train. Good things always happened on the train. Reuniting with his friends, new-year celebration pranks, catching up on everyone else's gossip, meeting Lily for the first time. The train ride never let him down. Idly, he wondered if tomorrow's train ride would live up to expectations.

He was very curious how his first run-in of the year would go with Evans tomorrow. They hadn't spoken after the night of their Defense OWL, and that interaction had been so bizarre and confusing that he really didn't know what to expect. But then, he thought, when did he ever know what to expect from her? Even when he _knew_ what he knew he should expect, he was still floored when it actually happened. A dozen rejected Hogsmeade invitations flashed through his mind and he tried not to cringe.

Taking a deep breath and pushing his hands further through the wet dirt he was kneeling in, James glanced at Sirius out of the corner of his eye. Satisfied that his best friend was occupied with something that wasn't him, he looked forward again and nodded to himself once, deciding firmly that he was not going to be anxious about seeing her this year. Or, if he could manage it, seeing her at all.

He tried to remember if he had made this decision before, because if he had he had been failing miserably. He couldn't think of a time though, so he pursed his lips and nodded again, more thoughtfully, cementing his decision and trying to force his emotions to follow it. The feelings he had for Lily were good ones… even when they were bad. And he didn't want to let all those good emotions turn into bad feelings, either within himself or between the two of them. Not ever.

Pleased with his resolution, even if he still didn't know what to expect tomorrow, he smiled.

"Mate, what the hell are you smiling like that for?"

James stopped smiling and fought down a blush. But thankfully, before he could respond or Sirius could prod him for an answer, Mrs. Potter leaned out of the back door and called to them. "All right, I think that's enough, boys. Give me those and dinner will be ready in no time." Then she Summoned the pile of vegetables in front of them and turned back into the kitchen, leading the floating vegetables ahead of her with her wand.

Sirius gave a sort of incredulous huff from beside James. _"She couldn't just have done that from the beginning?" _he demanded indignantly. James laughed out loud and let Sirius pull him up as he stood, out of the dirt and out of his reverie. Halfheartedly, they continued complaining as they went back inside and washed up, but they quieted down when they sat for dinner and tasted the delicious going-away supper that was sat before them.

They were presented with a similarly extravagant breakfast the next morning, and James reminded his mother than a person could only handle so much delicious food at a time, and they were sure to be spoiled again at the Welcome Feast that night. Sirius jokingly worried about maintaining his figure, but both boys ate enthusiastically, happily inhaling eggs and porridge and bacon while James' parents looked on in amusement.

By the time the family finished their meal and had cleaned up, it was just before ten.

"Well, we'd best get going, yeah?" said Mr. Potter, standing up as his wife walked into the sitting room where he and the two sixteen year olds were waiting, drying her hands on a wash rag and straightening her skirt.

"_Yes," _James agreed loudly. Sirius gave him a disapproving glance because, even if it was Hogwarts, no one should be that excited about school starting, but his parents simply smirked and smiled at each other before herding the boys and their luggage into the fireplace.

҉

Not once in that past five years had Lily walked into Kings Cross and not felt excited about returning to Hogwarts. She had been nervous her first year, and torn about leaving her the remnants of her grieving family behind after her mother's passing during second year, and she'd been angry several times when Petunia had accompanied her to the station just for the extra opportunity to tease her, but she had always had a flutter of excitement underneath the more negative emotions.

There was no flutter this time. As her father pushed her luggage ahead of them and chatted about all the people milling about, the only thing Lily could feel was dread, and that was definitely not fluttering. The apprehension welled up inside her, over and over in irregular patterns that fought with her breath.

She didn't want to be here.

"Lily, love, are you okay? You've been so quiet all morning."

Lily looked up from the floor, startled by her father's words, despite the gentle softness with which they had been spoken. She pushed the knuckles of her closed fists together and pulled up a smile.

"Yeah, sorry, Dad. I didn't get much sleep last night and this morning has just been getting the better of me," Lily said, her voice casual and her shoulders rising and falling in a shrug to help carry her words. She let out a dry laugh and added, "I'm just trying to get myself back into a mind for school, I guess."

Her father looked over at her and smiled happily. Proudly. "Nervous?" he asked, a small note of amusement in his voice because the daughter he knew could be many things, but nervous was rarely one of them.

_Was I nervous? Only enough to want to vomit and throw myself into a wall._

"Nah, that's not it. I've just got to adjust back to the other way of doing things."

Lily's father chuckled, patting her shoulder and squeezing her into his side as they paused, stuck behind an unmoving group of grade school-age children in red sweaters. "Ah, you'll be fine, love. You've never had any trouble getting into it before. Hell, even when you were eleven you fell right into the mix of things, didn't you?" He laughed jovially and Lily chuckled weakly next to him. After a few minutes, her father pulled his arm from around her and made a "tcha!" noise, remarking good-naturedly about how many school-trippers it could take to figure out the time table, and steered them around the blockage.

In no time, they were outside of Platform 9¾ and Lily was hugging her father good-bye. His cheerful manner, which had persisted all morning, faded quickly, and he was left teary as his youngest daughter promised to write.

"No, Dad, don't _cry!" _Lily exclaimed. It always happened like this, but the situation would never be one that Lily looked forward to seeing. Trying to be comforting, she put her hand onto his, resting on top of her trunk. "Merlin, you'll see me again in just a few weeks!"

Out of nowhere her dad barked out a loud laugh. When he looked up at Lily again, he was shaking his head but smiling, using one finger to wipe underneath his eyes. "Merlin, right. Merlin," he muttered. Then, as quickly as his control had slipped, he captured it again and pulled a baffled Lily into a close hug. "Be good, Stem."

"Dad, I'm _always-"_

"Yes, yes, I _know_ that you're always good. But I've got to say it anyway, haven't I?" He pulled back to look Lily in the eye. His hands gripped her shoulders and his eyes were dry, but now it seemed Lily's turn for tears.

"I'll miss you," she whispered, burying her face back into the familiar corduroy of her father's jacket. He pulled her in close, speaking soothingly into her hair.

"And I you," he told her. He stroked her hair twice, as opposed to this goodbye as she was, before pulling back. "It's twenty-till, Stem. You'd better get going."

Lily sighed. _I've never wanted to walk through that barrier less, even when I thought it was going to crush me, _she thought gloomily. "I know," she said out loud. "I love you, Dad."

"I love you too, my angel."

One more smile and a kiss on the forehead for each of them and Lily was turning away, her father's encouraging hand leaving the small of her back as she ran her trolley through the wall between platforms.

Just like every year, Lily was met with boisterous noise and a dozen things pulling her attention at once. Families surrounded her by the entrance, and beyond that were more students hurrying back and forth, arms wrapped around bags and owl cages and friends. She scanned the scene quickly, looking for her roommates, but the platform was so crowded that she couldn't spot any of them.

She did spot Remus Lupin standing several yards away, saying his goodbyes to a skinny-looking couple that had to be his parents. She sent him a smile that she wasn't sure he saw and began to weave her way towards the scarlet train.

It took Lily nearly ten minutes after struggling her trunk onto the train for her to find the compartment that her roommates Marlene and Lori had set up in. When she spotted them, she knocked the door open and pulled her trunk in with her, letting it drop on the floor so she could properly greet her friends.

It was good to see them. Both girls jumped up to embrace her, and she hugged them back. _This is why you like school,_ Lily told herself. Before Lily could even put her trunk away, both girls were talking excitedly, to one another, over one another. The room was full of their happy voices, and Lily couldn't help but smile. She listened to them chatter as she put her trunk away and settled into a bench, not putting much in but happy just to be near them again.

It seemed that there was no time at all before they heard the train whistle and start to move, slowly gaining speed as it left the station. Marlene and Lori paused their conversation when they saw Lily next to them had frozen completely, her eyes clamped shut and her teeth gnawing at her bottom lip.

"Lils?" Marlene asked, and Lily jumped a bit, opening her eyes and looking between them. She put on a strained smile.

"I've got to go to the prefect meeting now," she said. Immediately understanding lit the other girls' eyes, and when Lily moved to stand, her two friends stood with her. Smiling gratefully, Lily led the way out into the corridor. She was taking deep, steadying breaths as they moved, but there were so many people still walking that it was hard for them all to stay together. Suddenly, Lori shouted from behind Lily.

"Hey, Remus!" she called loudly. Lily and Marlene followed her gaze down to the end of the corridor, where Remus Lupin was standing with, who else, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew. Lily's face flushed and she darted her eyes to the ground, but she kept moving, jostled forward by the crowd and steered towards the three boys by Lori's hand on the small of her back. Eventually the three of them joined the group.

"Lily, Marlene, Lori," Remus nodded to them all in turn. They returned the greetings and Lily let Marlene and Lori make small talk about how their holidays were as she stayed silent at Marlene's side, playing with her fingers and refusing to look up.

"You know," a voice suddenly whispered into Lily's ear, "if you didn't want to talk to any of us you did have to stop."

Lily jumped. James' close proximity was unnerving and she felt tongue-tied just thinking about having to talk to him, but the crowded corridor didn't leave her many options. Unsurprisingly he was smirking flirtatiously at her, but his eyes held a tentative kind of civility, like reaching your hand out to pick up someone you had pushed down a lot in the past.

"Shove off, Potter, that's not it." Lily didn't mean to sound to short, she really didn't. But her nerves and the pounding in the back of her head reminding her of the prefect meeting had zapped all of her patience over the course of the short morning. All she had left at the moment was vulnerable irritability, and with her typical pride, Lily was more than happy to be blunt and short than to let that vulnerability slip before she got off the train.

"Damn," James murmured. "I know the ending of summer isn't fun, Evans, but no reason to be so testy with me. I thought you were the one who liked school!"

"Oh, I'm not being testy with _you. _I'm being testy with everyone. I don't want to have to deal with today." Lily's voice was low, low enough that James had to strain to understand her properly. She wasn't looking at him anymore; her arms were crossed and she seemed to be thinking out loud to herself rather than talking to him.

"Why, what's wrong with today?" James tried to ask, but he'd barely started the sentence when Lily, staring blankly down the hallway, suddenly stiffened and stood up straight. James wasn't the only one to notice; he and Marlene both followed Lily's shocked gaze to the opposite end of the train car.

Standing in the still-open door between cars were two people already dressed in dark Hogwarts robes, with green and silver ties and Prefect badges on their chests. Severus Snape and his fellow sixth year Prefect Rosalind Greengrass. James and Marlene both stiffened to match Lily. Marlene wrapped and arm around Lily comfortingly and nudged Lori next to her, and suddenly James didn't have to finish asking Lily what was so unpleasant about today that was putting her in such a mood.

The Prefect meeting. The bloody Prefect meeting.

Totally unaware of her friends' subtle movements around her and the sudden silence that had enveloped the group of six, Lily stayed frozen between James and Marlene, green eyes locked with the black ones twenty meters down.

_A/N: I'm sorry! I have no good excuse for not writing for five and a half months. Actually, I did write. But I would do like 900 words and then get to something that I didn't want to write… and so I wouldn't. For months I had this half-finished on my desktop, and I could have published it, but I really wanted to get to at least this point before leaving off the chapter. I'm sorry. I know I suck._

_I have NOT abandoned this story though! Fall term is ending soon and I'll have a month off for Christmas coming, and I have a slightly-better-than-vague notion of how the next chapter is going to go, so hopefully I'll get some writing done then. I hope you liked this chapter._

_Review! It makes me feel guilty if I go to long without working on this. Thanks for reading. :)_


	4. Temper Temper

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Everything is the property of Jo Ro and her many wonderful publishers, etc._

_Chapter 4, Temper Temper_

The group was utterly and tensely silent as the five other pairs of eyes joined Lily's. James' jaw tightened as he watched Snape and the faceless girl next to him move closer and closer to the group. Inside his head he urged Snape to glance at him – away from Lily – for even a second so that maybe, just maybe, the daggers he was shooting at him could hit home. But James might as well have been another wood panel on the wall for all the attention Snape was paying him and the other Gryffindors.

Lily didn't seem to notice their attentions either. She had dimly realized that her friends had stopped talking, but she couldn't will herself to look at them and see why. She could barely will herself to breathe, it seemed. She was taking short, shallow breaths and it was the best she could do. Snape's coal black eyes shone, boring mercilessly into hers and begging for an answer to a question that made her stomach churn.

As Snape got closer, his gaze seemed to intensify with every step until he was too far by to keep looking at her. Only then did Lily feel the persistent tugging on her sleeve. She blinked herself out of her frozen shock and let out a shaky breathe she hadn't realized she was holding and looked down at Marlene.

James watched Snape hurry into the next car, his eyes lingering on the door after it closed before he turned back to the group. Remus was still staring towards the end of the car, eyes narrowed to slits, but Peter was looking worriedly at Lily. Her head was bowed slightly as Marlene whispered in her ear and Lori had stepped in front of Lily, standing slightly in front of Peter and Remus as they faced the girls. She had one of Lily's hands on both of hers and was nodding along to whatever Marlene was saying.

James was flabbergasted to see her reaction. After the fit he saw at the end of the year, he'd figured that she'd have had the whole summer to be sad before letting lose the typical Lily Evans Temper that he'd come to know so well. Clearly, he had figured wrong.

He felt awkward and intrusive as he took in her shaking hands and listened to Marlene and Lori whisper reassuringly to her. A shaken Lily Evans wasn't a sight often witnessed at Hogwarts, and James felt acutely more useless than he might have last year as he recalled how he had comforted her last spring. He had no idea how to help her in this situation. Even if she wanted him to, how could he right now?

Catching Remus' eye, James raised his eyebrows and Remus nodded wordlessly, telling his friend with a look that _yeah, I'll take care of her, mate, _and he wasn't just doing it because it was Lily and James was looking at him like that. James wasn't the only one that felt guilty about what had happened by the lake last year. Remus and Lily had been friendly enough over the years, and moreso in the last when they shared Prefect duties together. They were friends, and he wanted to help, especially because he was the only one that could at the moment.

"Come on, Lil. I'll walk to the meeting with you." Remus stepped forward a little, nudging Lily and smiling reassuringly at her. Lily bit her lip, but Lori prodded her slightly from the other side and they all knew she had to go anyway, and she might as well walk in with some company so she had someone to look at that didn't make her feel ill.

"Yeah, alright, then. Let's go," Lily said, accepting Remus' extravagantly held out arm with a roll of her eyes, but accepting it nonetheless. They moved out of the circle of their friends and made to the end of the car, Remus asking about her summer and Lily successfully deflecting so she didn't have to admit how dull it was.

They made small talk as they wound through the slowly clearing corridors, about Remus' summer exploits and O.W.L. scores (to neither's surprise, both of them had done extremely well) and the likelihood that they would have a new Defense teacher again this year.

As they neared their destination, Lily sighed. "Remus," she said, "I appreciate this, but you haven't got to babysit me. I'm a big girl, and all that."

"Lily Evans," Remus started in a mockingly affronted tone, turning to look at her as they made their way down the last car before the Prefect's Compartment. "I am insulted."

Lily blinked. "Excuse me?"

Remus, working to keep a straight face, took an unnecessarily deep breath and pulled a pained expression, turning his face to the ceiling. "If you don't want to be seen with me, I understand."

"What are you on about?" Lily interrupted.

"I mean, I know that I'm _quite _the embarrassment," Remus went on melodramatically, ignoring Lily's interruption and her quizzical looks. "Never would I want to _mar_ your beautiful social image by associating you with myself-"

"Remus!"

"So yes, of course, m'lady-"

"M'lady? Really?"

"-you go ahead in now, and I will come in later, so that no one might ever suspect that we interacted."

"Oh, shut up, you." Lily was laughing now. Remus' voice had been rising as he spoke and as Lily interrupted him, his entire body moving in exaggerated emphasis.

"But of course, m'lady. Apologies! What could ever make me believe that you might wish to hear my pathetic ramblings, of course you don't want to talk to me." Remus mimed zipping his lips closed, failing miserably now as he tried to hide his smile. Lily shoved him.

"Of _course _I want to talk to you, you git."

"Oh? But if I'm a git…" he trailed off.

"Remus, but you're my _favorite_ git!" Lily said, laughing as she matched Remus' haughty exaggerations.

Remus gasped dramatically and put a hand over his heart. "Oh, the _honor!" _he exclaimed loudly.

Lily stuck her tongue out and they both laughed as they reached the end of the carriage.

"After you," Remus said at door to the Prefect Compartment. After a short pause, he smirked and added, "m'lady."

Lily laughed but didn't respond otherwise, and Remus followed behind her into the Prefect Compartment. He scanned the compartment quickly and spotted Snape, who was glaring incredulously at the pair, and he moved to Lily's other side so he was between them, before steering her towards the other side of the car.

Lily didn't let on that she noticed, but she pressed a hand gratefully to Remus' arm as they sat down.

Soon after they settled, the new Head Boy and Girl stood up and started the meeting. It was much the same as last year's meeting had been; they made introductions for the new Fifth Year Prefects, went over the new protocol for docking points, answered questions about how patrols were going to be run this year (two Prefects on patrol at a time; after what happened to Mary MacDonald last year, they didn't want to take any chances), and decided amongst the group when the first Prefect meeting would be once classes started.

Overall, the meeting went far better than Lily could possibly have hoped, though she allowed that this was probably because Remus had spent the entire time whispering jokes to her and leaning surreptitiously forward so that Snape wasn't in her line of vision. She smiled gratefully but genuinely at him as the new Heads made their closing remarks and dismissed everyone.

"May I have the honor of escorting you back to your own compartment, m'lady?" Remus asked as they stood.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake, only if you stop calling me 'm'lady.'"

Remus smiled. _"That_ I believe I can do."

"Well, thank God for that at least," she laughed, "because really, if you keep it up it might start going to my head, and then-"

"Can I have a word, Lily?"

Lily's head snapped up and her smiled dropped as she and Remus halted halfway down the corridor. Other Prefects streamed passed them, heading to other ends of the train to patrol the corridors or simply returning to their friends. Remus stepped noticeably closer to Lily.

"Snape," he said, clipping the word out cautiously.

"Did I say your name, Lupin?" Snape snapped.

"Hey!" Lily said sharply, narrowing her eyes and trying to covertly take deep breaths to calm her fluttering nerves. "Don't."

Remus looked closely between the two. "Come on, Lily, let's go," he said, putting a hand on Lily's arm and really, really not trusting Snape as the corridor emptied around them.

"Please," Snape muttered, voice so low that it was hard for Remus to make out. Snape locked eyes with Lily for the second time that day – he'd tried to catch her eye during the meeting, but Lupin always managed to be just perfectly in the way – and, like always, Lily found it hard to break the stare.

"Lily…"

She pulled her lip into her mouth, unsure, for just a second. "It's okay, Remus," she said then. She really didn't want to have to talk to him, but she knew it was going to happen sooner or later, and she decided she'd rather get it over with now so that when classes started she could go about them in at least a semi-normal fashion.

"Are you sure?"

Lily smiled at him, trying to look more reassured than she actually was. "Yeah, Remus. I'll be fine. I'll talk to you later, at the feast."

"Do you want me to wait for you?" he asked. Snape rolled him eyes and sighed impatiently.

"No, it's okay. Go back to everyone else. I'll see you later." Lily had an idea how this conversation would end, and she wasn't looking forward to it, but Remus had already seen Snape get the better of her once today, and that was enough for Lily.

"Alright, Lil…" Remus trailed off. He squeezed her hand once and then walked down the corridor and into the next car. The corridor was empty now; even the Heads had gone past, looking curiously at the halted group. _At least nobody else but me has to hear this,_ Lily thought a little spitefully.

As soon as Remus was gone, Snape started talking. "Lily, you've got to forgive me."

Lily crossed her arms in front of her. "Oh I do, do I?"

"I've apologized a thousand times. It was an _accident-"_

"You haven't apologized once!"

"Not in person, no," Snape conceded. "But only because you weren't around this summer, and that's what I'm trying to do now. I can't tell you how much I wish I hadn't said it. I told you a hundred times in the letters – which you could have replied to, by the way –"

"Hard to reply to something I never saw," Lily interrupted casually. Her chest felt tight with how much she didn't want to be having this conversation. Snape paused, blinking at her in confusion.

"What?"

"I didn't read the letters," Lily said simply. She hardly counted that first one since she hadn't finished it, despite the fact that she could probably recite to him the parts of it she had read.

"What do you mean you didn't _read them?" _Snape demanded. "I sent you one nearly every day!"

"I bloody noticed," she muttered bitterly. He'd made it completely impossible to try and forget about him over the summer, with that little brown-feathered reminder of what he'd done tapping on her window every day. The nerves and anxiety licking at her insides were flaring up with annoyance now: why the hell did he have to try and talk to her? She had purposefully ignored him all summer. Wasn't that a clear enough message?

"That's rubbish, Lily!"

"Excuse me?"

"I spent all summer trying to make it up to you what I said!" Snape was agitated now, his voice rising as he gestured madly. Lily stepped back, keeping her arms crossed and pursing her lips. She felt her cheeks flush and her temper raced through her veins as he yelled at her. "There's nothing I can do to take it back but I've been trying! How do you expect me to do that if you won't _listen?"_

"You're lucky I'm listening to you now! You absolutely don't deserve it!"

"After how many years of friendship, I don't deserve a chance to explain myself? I don't get a second chance?"

"I've given you a hundred second chances, Sev!" Lily exploded. "A hundred chances to act like you didn't agree with all the hateful bile that the rest of your house spat at me. A hundred chances to put me first, just once, ahead of your horrible obsession with the Dark Arts and all of your creepy other friends that support it. I've given you chance after chance after chance to act like we were friends, Sev, _and you never did."_

"Lily, you are my _best _friend."

"_Was," _Lily corrected him viciously. "I can't possibly be friends with someone who hates me-"

"Lily, I could _never _hate you! Fucking hell, I-"

"No," Lily stopped him. Slowly as they looked at each other, the anger drained from her face and all that was left was her pale skin blotched red by her temper and flat, pained eyes that were beginning to shine. "Snape, I'm not going to do this. Leave me… Just, don't, okay? Don't."

Snape's face was painted with shock as he watched her turn and continue down the corridor. His eyes followed the swing of her hair against her back but missed the shaking of her hands as she tried to bury them in the folds of her robe. He called out to her, his voice strained and desperate and _she has to come back_, but Lily kept her back straight and swept into the next car without any sign that she heard him.

҉

Lily collapsed into the first train car bathroom she passed once. It was tiny, and Lily could almost feel her anxiety fill up the small space around her in the second after she shut the door. But no one could see her here. She pressed her back hard against the wall and fought a few wayward tears back with shaky hands.

"Dammit, Lily," she muttered to herself. She pressed the balls of her hands hard into her eyes, watching the rainbow colored spots appear before her, and then she let out a small scream and lashed out violently, kicking the flimsy door hard enough to leave a small dent. Taking her hands away from her face, Lily took a few deep breaths, looking at the small mark she'd left and feeling the throbbing in her right foot.

Then she kept kicking.

Lily kicked the door over and over again, her hands hitting the walls sometimes to steady herself and sometimes because the kicking just didn't seem to be enough. Her hair flew in mess around her, knotting itself up, and she had no idea how long she let her outburst last before she stopped. Finally, panting, Lily slid down on to the floor.

"Bugger," she whispered, her forehead falling against her knees. Lily sat for several more minutes, her mind feeling blank but still whirring uncontrollably, until her heart had stopped pounding. Then she stood up and looked curiously in the mirror.

_You're not the kind of person that casually has breakdowns in bathrooms like this. _Lily sighed, running a hand through her hair and feeling all of the knots left in it. She couldn't take this anymore. She had to break away from it, away from altercations with Snape and blaming herself and all the self-pity. She wouldn't survive if she kept clinging like this. With one deep breath Lily made her decision, trying to let as much of it go as she could when she exhaled.

She knew it was going to take longer than the time she had right now, but that was okay. It would be no good trying to trudge through classes and everything else at Hogwarts in the same state of mind that she'd stewed in all summer, and honestly, she was better than that.

_You deserve friends that give a damn about you. You deserve people that care._ And telling herself that, Lily pulled out her wand, trying to fix that damage she'd done to the walls and to herself before she went back to those people that did care about her.

҉

Lily was only slightly quieter than she might have been when she sat back down in her compartment. Of course, her friends already knew that Snape had stopped her. As she sat down and ran through the bare details, she hoped that Remus had told them and that this wasn't going to become the story that everyone whispered about at the Feast.

"What a rude little prat. I'm glad that you yelled at him, Lily," Marlene said when the story finished.

"Yeah," Lori agreed. "Are you okay, though?"

"I'm fine," Lily assured them. It was pretty much true. "I'm just ready to get the feast over with and go to bed."

"Well it looks like you're getting that much closer to it," Mary said, looking out the window as the train started to slow down noticeably. "We're here."

And then the compartment was a blur of motion, with Mary hurrying to pack all of her things back into her trunk and Marlene and Lori tucking their shirts into their skirts and fixing their ties and, "I _know_ that I pulled my robe out already, where the bloody hell did it go?" Lily smiled a little bit because this was always her favorite part of the journey to Hogwarts.

The train finally halted and they could see the dark outlines of Hogsmeade station outside the window. Moving around her friends as they did the same, Lily pulled her luggage from the rack. Mary's cat Bermuda meowed loudly from his basket, eager to get out and annoyed with all the commotion.

The girls made their way off the train, complaining that they couldn't levitate their luggage onto the platform—"Like we're not close enough to Hogwarts for it to count, bloody rule-followers," Lori griped—before hurrying towards the carriages. There was still a handful left, students hurrying around trying to snag one with their friends. It was dark out, but still lighted enough to start seeing other classmates again and noticing all the things that can change over a few months holiday.

Luckily, the Gryffindor girls made it to a carriage that was empty but for a few Third Year Hufflepuff boys. They talked about inconsequential things like what kinds of pudding there might be tonight and did anyone else see Jeremiah Ryker and Addison Warbler holding hands as they got off the train?

It didn't feel quite time for the ride to be over when the carriages halted and the door popped open, but still they climbed out and up the front steps. And despite all the events that had frayed her nerves and the fact that Lily and every other returning student knew that Hogwarts was never really that relaxing a place to be, as she walked through the overlarge doors and into the Great Hall, Lily sighed with relief.

_A/N: Once again, I know that I suck, and I'm sorry. But please know that, even when I do take five months to update, I have _not _abandoned this story. I promise. If I ever abandon it I will let you know, but I have too much that I want to do with it still to do that._

_I hope you like this chapter as much as I do. Now that I've got them back at Hogwarts I can get into what I really want to do with the story, and even if parts of it are going to be tough to write, I'm looking forward to it. I hope you like it._


	5. Emendan Ossa

_Disclaimer: Everything is the property of Jo Ro and her many wonderful publishers, etc._

_Chapter 5, Emendan Ossa_

"Lily, you are going to get syrup _all over my notes. _Stop it."

"That's only because you're notes are _all over the bloody table,_ Marlene."

"They are not," Marlene huffed, shuffling the mounds of parchment so they might take up slightly less space. "And I need to _study,_ you horrible little thing."

Lily scoffed. "Marlene, we've only been in lessons for a couple of weeks, and it's Charms for Merlin's sake. It'll be a review exam more than anything. It isn't going to be hard."

"Coming from someone who spent their whole weekend doing revisions."

Lily scoffed and shook her head, but knew better than to laugh at her friend's nerves. "Really, Mar, you are such a worrier for some of the things you get up to."

Marlene made a face, but in the seats across from them Mary and Lori laughed as they nodded their agreement. All four of them looked over when a new voice called out from a little down the table.

"Oi, who are you girls talking about down there?"

"Marlene," Lily called back to Sirius. The rest of the Marauders were settled in the seats across from him, piling food onto already full plates that, to Remus and Peter at least, seemed far more important than whatever Sirius was talking about.

"I was talking about Lily, actually," Marlene said.

"Oh, I could have sworn you were talking about Remus." Sirius smiled charmingly and glanced at his friend, who looked up at his name.

"Excuse me?" Remus asked indignantly.

James snorted. "What, a compulsive worrier known for getting into ridiculous bouts of trouble that also spends entirely too much of his free time revising? Cos that sounds _nothing _like you, Moony."

"You know what, I don't even care," Remus decided. "I'm trying to eat."

"And I'm trying to study, but none of you lot will shut up!" Marlene complained.

"Study for what, McKinnon?" James asked, glancing quickly at Lily and then back to Marlene. "Not Flitwick's shit little exam, are you? That's going to be cake."

"Says James Bloody Potter," Marlene griped more, shaking her hair around her face and trying to concentrate on her notes again.

"Really, you guys aren't going to make her feel any better," Lori said. "She'll only get over it when she's taken the damn thing and done brilliantly on it."

"Cramming right now isn't going to make it any better," Lily shrugged. She was well used to Marlene's nervous paranoia about exams, but apparently Sirius Black was having none of it.

"Not least of all because it is entirely too early to be studying," he said, scooting down the bench far enough to gather Marlene's notes up quickly and shove them back into her bag.

All of them laughed as Marlene squawked indignantly and hit Sirius' arms. "Black, it's eight am," Lily pointed out.

"Yes, exactly," James said. He dipped his head down as a huge yawn overtook him, and Lily watched his mess of hair fall over his eyes. For once, he wasn't pushing it back, and Lily found she quite liked it in his face a bit… When James looked up and caught Lily's eyes on him, his eyebrows popped up in surprise and a blush flooded Lily's cheeks. She swore to herself, but James stomach flipped and he reached up to ruffle his hair.

Marlene finally had enough and shoved Sirius back down the bench, but both of them were laughing as they returned to their own groups of friends. James and Lily followed them, going back to their food and their own conversations. Marlene had relented under the teasing and the knowing reminder from Mary that she always tried to study in the mornings and it only made her anxious, so she was better off without it.

The two groups finished eating along with the rest of the Great Hall and eventually made their way upstairs and down the Charms Corridor for Flitwick's exam. As per everyone's expectations, it was almost laughably easy, and when it was over Marlene fended off more jokes from both her roommates and Sirius Black, who passed them leaving the classroom with the rest of the Marauders.

A good portion of the Sixth Years had a free period after Charms, including Lily, who stayed in the Charms classroom after dismissal to talk to Flitwick while her three roommates hurried off to Muggle Studies on the other side of the castle. It was something she did often, since her friends were otherwise occupied. Flitwick and Lily got along well, and the little professor was always excited to talk Charms with a student who enjoyed it. This day, after nearly half an hour of the free period had passed, Flitwick excitedly remembered a pamphlet he had gotten in the mail from _Charms Quarterly. _He pulled it out and thrust it into Lily's hands.

"You have got to read it, Miss Evans," he gushed. "They're testing a new theory down in France and apparently- well, you'd better just read it, I'll ruin the surprise."

Lily chuckled at her professor's happy enthusiasm but took the pamphlet from him. The two bid goodbye and Flitwick retreated to his office and Lily began her journey back to Gryffindor Tower, flipping the pamphlet open as she started walking.

Lily still had her nose buried in it when she rounded a corner on the fourth floor and heard a group of voices echoing ahead of her. She looked up and stopped in her tracks. Just down the corridor and coming her way were four people adorned in green and silver.

Rellan Mulciber glanced up and noticed the Gryffindor, and Lily saw him smile. He spoke quickly and Lily's eyes darted to the three people walking with him. Sycra Halsley looked small standing next to Mulciber's wide frame, his oily skin shining when they passed a torch on the wall. Adeline Cowings stood on Halsley's other side, her blonde hair piled high on her head and her extraordinarily unnecessary high heels clicking against the stone floor as the group continued purposely towards Lily now. Lastly, standing slightly behind and several inches shorter than all the rest, was fifteen year old Regulus Black.

"Bugger," Lily muttered to herself, folding the parchment up and shoving it into her pocket as the Slytherins stopped in front of her. She left her hand in her pocket, her fingers closing around the end of her wand.

"If it's not our Precious Prefect Lily Evans, wandering around by herself," Mulciber drawled. Lily could feel the adrenaline starting to thrum through her system. Cautiously, she looked from one face to the next. Mulciber and Halsley looked eager, excited, though it was pretty clear that Halsley was taking his cues from the boy next to him. Adeline Cowings was sneering at Lily, her nose turned up in disgust, but then again she always looked at Lily like that. Still hanging a little back, Lily looked at Regulus Black too. His lower lip was caught in his teeth and he looked nervous.

She didn't miss the fact that Regulus was the only one who didn't have a hand stuck in their wand pocket. Lily's own fingers closed a little tighter around the handle of her own.

"If it's not today's selection of assorted Slytherin bullies, looking for someone to frighten," she retorted.

"Aww, are you frightened, Evans?" Halsley teased.

"Sorry to disappoint, Halsley, but to be honest I'd more scared of the dark."

"Oh, but Evans," Mulciber said quietly. "How do you know we aren't the dark?" He took a dangerous step forward and the others followed him, moving to circle around Lily. She took several quick steps back and Cowings laughed. "How do you know that we're not what's lurking under your bed and in the closet?" Mulciber continued, getting close enough now that he was almost whispering in Lily's ear. She took another step back and, thankfully, Mulciber let the space stay for the moment.

"You know, Mulciber, I never did think of you as much of a Boogeyman type, but now you mention it, I can definitely see the resemblance." Lily knew that the group of Purebloods wouldn't understand the Boogeyman reference, but they understood her tone enough to narrow their eyes hatefully.

"Do you know what we could do to you, Mudblood?" Cowings demanded. "You're pathetic!"

Cowings' stuck-up voice had always grated on Lily, and it rubbed a raw spot on her temper right then. Despite the horrible prospect that she was going to have to fight all four Slytherins by herself, she shifted her glare to Cowings and said, "If you're so eager for a fight, you little bint, then-"

"OI!" a voice shouted from behind Lily, interrupting her. Everyone's eyes shifted quickly to the newcomer, and Lily was surprised (as well as a bit relieved) to see Sirius Black sidling up next to her, his usual confident smile in place and his wand already out in his hand. "I see that I'm missing a party over here-"

"_Everte statum!"_

Sirius jumped out of the way and shot quickly back at Mulciber. The Slytherins, apparently, did not take well to the other side having wands out first. Lily whipped her own out and shouted "_Expelliarmus!" _She drew her arc too wide though, and the spell only caught Regulus. His wand flew high and Lily caught it deftly, shoving it into her pocket. Sirius and Mulciber were falling deep into a duel already and Lily was left looking at the two armed Slytherins in front of her. Quickly, she shot a spell at Halsley and he swore as his feet began dancing wildly beneath him.

Cowings took the time to glace scathingly at Halsley as he stumbled, calling Regulus to help him, but wasn't quite distracted enough to let Lily's first hex hit home. Lily had seen Cowings fight before and knew that she wasn't outmatched. As they starting fighting in earnest, Cowings easily deflected everything Lily could throw at her, but the spells she shot back were weak.

"_Stupefy!"_ Lily tried after several goes, getting a little desperate as Cowings deflected it and Lily had to duck to avoid the ricochet. Just behind Cowings Regulus had taken Halsley's wand and was quickly undoing the spell. She tried again to Stun Cowings, getting more violent in her wandwork so that, even with the shield charm, the force of the spell pushed her opponent back several feet.

"Finally! Gimme that back, Reg," Halsley shouted, taking his wand back from Regulus and stepping between the two duels. Lily swore. She could handle Cowings for as long as it took, but she didn't know how well she'd fair two to one. Lily moved her wand almost unconsciously as she watched the third Slytherin pause between the two frays, not doing anything.

Cowings moved quickly, sending a strong Stinging Jinx at Lily that hit her on the neck. Lily jerked back, but before Cowings could draw breath for another spell, Lily straightened up and again shouted, "_Tarantallegra!" _Cowings swore and stumbled as her feet began jumping beneath her too. Lily turned to Halsley, who was standing between Sirius and Lily, still unsure of whose duel to join in on.

Lily shot a spell at him quickly. Cowings was already trying to do the counter-curse on herself, either not needing or not bothering to ask Regulus for help, though he was standing stock still several meters back from the rest of the fray. Halsley dodged Lily's jinx and spun to face her, shooting an errant Bat-Bogey Hex that flew a foot over Lily's head. She wasn't sure that Halsley had ever been in a real fight before and it showed, however willing he was.

Halsley didn't send another spell Lily's way, but as Cowings finally managed to still her own feet and turned her attention back to Lily, he shifted slightly again and raised his wand towards Sirius, whose back was turned.

"Sirius!" Lily yelled, and Sirius looked around quickly enough to dodge Halsley's curse, though he was knocked violently back by Mulciber, who took advantage of his distraction. Angry now, Lily shot a hex at Halsley and he collapsed into a fit of sneezes. He was the least of her worries as Cowings took a breath and sent another spell whizzing past Lily's shoulder.

Lily could feel her heart racing, beating her anger into every corner of her body. She raised her wand and moved quickly, sending spell after spell at Cowings, hardly giving herself time to breath. _"Densaugeo! Colloshoo! Expelliarmus! Conjunctivitis!" _Cowings stepped back as she fought to dodge and deflect all of Lily's spells. She did, barely, and was lucky as Lily drew a breath for another round of them, Halsley sent another Stinging Hex at her, catching her unawares and making her flinch back, her wand hand moving to grasp her left arm.

Cowings steadied herself and glared harshly at Lily, who sneered back at she straightened. Brandishing her was extravagantly but in her strongest spell Lily had seen, Cowings aimed at Lily's middle and cried, "_Serpensortia!" _Lily gasped as the large snake came flying towards her.

"_Reducto!" _she shouted, and the snake blasted apart with such force that the debris flew violently back at Cowings, who raised her arms about her face to protect herself. Spinning quickly, Lily aimed her wand at Halsley, who was sending another curse at Sirius as he came out of his fit. "_Protego!" _A long shield flew up between herself and Sirius and Halsley, pushing the Slytherin back a few steps as he swore and tried to break it.

Now that Halsley was momentarily out of the way again, Lily looked back at Cowings, who was just starting to straighten up as she coughed out a handful of snake scales. Before the other girl's wand was even fully raised, Lily shouted, "_Petrificus totalus!" _She gave herself a second to watch Cowings freeze in her half-hunched position and tip over, landing hard on her side on the stone floor, before moving on.

Whipping around violently again, Lily found Halsley still trying to take down her shield, obviously frustrated. Smirking a bit, she stepped forward and tore it down herself. Clearly inexperienced in a practical fight, Halsley stumbled over his spellwork and Lily flicked her wand, watching as Halsley's flew in a high arc and into Lily's hand. While his wide eyes were still trailing his wand, Lily cast another spell and he was hoisted up high by his ankle, robes spinning around his head as he swore loudly.

Mulciber shouted furiously behind her there was a blast of light and a thud that was Sirius hitting the ground. As Mulciber advanced on him Lily raised her own wand, but before she could cast a spell Mulciber had blown her back and she hit the wall several feet behind her.

Sirius and Mulciber were fighting much more viciously that Lily had been. Sirius was kneeling on the ground, struggling to stand, and Mulciber towered over him. Lily couldn't hear the words they said, but Sirius scowled and Mulciber laughed loudly, pushing Sirius bodily to the ground.

Turning to Lily again, he sneered, and it seemed that he wasn't going bother wasting words on her as he raised his wand. Lily, still trying to regain her breath, forced herself to stand. Mulciber didn't even look tired."_Sectumsempra!" _

Her heart dropping, Lily scrambled out of the way and the curse hit the wall behind her, cutting into the stone and sending small pieces cascading to the floor. Lily knew that spell.

"_Incarcerous!" _Sirius bellowed over Mulciber's next curse, brandishing his wand and Mulciber hit the ground, shouting and swearing but completely bound up in the ropes Sirius had conjured. His wand clattered out of his tied hands and onto the floor next to him.

Lily let out a breath she'd been holding and whipped her head around, seeing no threats left but still so caught up in the fight that it was hard to stop shooting spells. Her gaze drifted over Halsley, who was cursing under his breath, jerking and flailing fantastically as he tried in vain to break the spell, to Cowings, still immobile on the ground, before landing on Regulus, wandless and standing pressed against the opposite wall, eyes wide as he took in the aftermath of the duel around him. Lily vaguely thought about the fact that this was Sirius' younger brother – _Jesus, he's only a Fifth Year_ – before turning quickly to Sirius himself.

"Black," she said quietly, moving quickly so she was kneeling at Sirius' side. "You okay?"

Before the words were even fully out of her mouth Sirius was nodding. "Yeah, Evans, I'm good." But from Lily's eyes, he didn't look all that good. He was on the floor, only partially up on one knee and his left hand splayed out on the ground at his side to steady him. He reached his right hand up as he spoke, his wand still clutched tightly in his fingers, and wiped away a drop of blood that was seeping down from a small cut under his eye.

"You sure?" Lily pressed, but he waved her concern off.

"Yeah, just help me up."

Swallowing hard as the adrenaline still pumped through her body, Lily stood, holding her hand out to Black and hauling him up next to her. Both of their breath came fast as they surveyed their fallen classmates.

"What do you plan on doing with them now?" Sirius asked in a low voice, looking carefully at Lily for several long seconds before letting a small smirk pull at his lips and adding, "Prefect?"

Lily snorted and rolled her eyes _(Bloody hell, what a time to be joking)_ but pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked critically around her. She was quiet for several moments, unsure. She really ought to report this to McGonagall, and she knew it. She and Sirius had only acted in self-defense, and it's not like anyone was badly hurt. She barely saw out of the corner of her eye as Sirius' gaze shot quickly from her face, over to his brother, and then back. That's what made her finally move.

Not hesitating and not bothering to clue Sirius in, Lily knelt quickly down to pick up Mulciber and Cowings' wands from where they had let them fall. Gathering them up with the two others she'd already claimed, she straightened and nodded Sirius towards the end of the corridor. Lily locked eyes with Regulus – the only one that could even possibly come after them, even if he was wandless – and kept looking at him as she and Sirius slowly made their way down the corridor.

When she was nearing the corner she saw his eyes dart to the collection of wands in her hand. "What're you-"

"Tcht tcht tcht," Lily clucked her tongue loudly, cutting him off. Very carefully from the set, she pulled a short, light-colored wand out. Regulus' wand. She held it up before him, twitching it slightly in her fingers, before turning and tossing it quickly up on top of the lentil of the tall door next to her.

"You can come and get yours, and undo all of what we did to your little mates." She raised her eyebrows and the younger boy nodded jerkily that he understood. "Their wands," Lily continued, acid seeping into her voice and hardening it to a steel edge, "will be downstairs." And with that, she took a few long steps to the railing next to them add threw them violently, staying there until the light sound of wood bouncing off marble stopped. The Room of Staircases was a big one, and they were on the fourth floor. Plenty of steps to fall down. Sirius looked at her appreciatively and, after another long look at Regulus, Lily tugged his sleeve and they left, hurrying up a flight of stairs and back towards Gryffindor Tower.

҉

"Black, you're limping."

The pair had been moving quickly away from the Slytherins, but the farther they got the harder it seemed to be for Sirius to keep going. He had one hand clutched at his side, something was definitely wrong with his left leg the way he was walking on it, and his face was screwed up in pain. He shot her a forced kind of smile.

"Reckon I can tell that on my own, Evans," Sirius remarked, grunting slightly as he pressed one hand harder into his side, trying to stop the pain because Merlin it felt like his ribs were moving. "Thanks, though."

"No, you're really limping," she persisted, grabbing Sirius' arm and pulling him to a stop. Regulus was probably still freeing the other three, and even if they'd had their wands, Lily doubted the group would come after them again.

"What, there's more than one way to limp now?" Sirius demanded jokingly, tired and aching and wanting nothing else than to get back to the tower already so he could have Remus fix him up. "I'm fine."

"You're holding your ribs like they're broken to pieces and you're fine?" Lily challenged. "Rubbish."

Despite the fact that it hurt, Sirius chuckled bitterly. "Oh, trust me, they're not broken. Cracked, maybe. But I would know if they were broken." Lily looked up at his tone, but it didn't sound like something Sirius was going to elaborate on, and she wasn't going to push it.

"Let me see."

"Let you- What?"

"Let me see, you idiot," Lily said again, moving forward and flicking the bottom of Sirius' untucked shirt.

Sirius raised his eyebrows, looking amused and a bit annoyed. "If getting me without a shirt is what you're after, Evans, I understand, but I don't know how good an idea that is, considering that my best mate would throw me off the Astronomy Tower. Now really doesn't seem the best time, regardless."

Lily rolled her eyes. "You do think highly of yourself, but no. I can mend them if you'll let me see, is what I was getting at."

"You can mend bones?" Sirius asked incredulously. Lily nodded and Sirius gaped at her. "Where in the hell did you pick that little trophy up?"

"Well considering this is a school, it's full of these marvelous little things called books."

"Oh, so you mean theoretically you can mend bones. I think I'm okay not being a guinea pig for your first go at a spell, thanks. You're really talented and all—as evidenced by our last activities—but it's a complicated spell, Evans."

"I did not mean theoretically. I've done it a dozen times. But if you'd rather keep going all the way up to Gryffindor Tower in your state so that Remus can mend them—I'm assuming that you're going to have Remus do it?—then go right ahead. I was just trying to help." Lily shrugged and stood in front of Sirius, letting him size her up.

After a few moments, Sirius nodded. It did really hurt. "Alright, then," he said, moving to the side of the corridor and unbuttoning his shirt. He sat down against the stone wall—he knew from experience that it was best to be sitting down when you had bones mended—and Lily knelt next to him, pulling her wand out and gingerly moving his shirt out of the way.

Sirius' right side was swollen and red, bruises already starting to form. "What did he hit you with?" Lily asked as she ran her fingers over the injury. Sirius hissed and she pulled back quickly. "Sorry. I'm trying to be gentle."

"S'okay," Sirius replied, but his jaw was clenched tight and Lily knew how much this must be hurting him. "I dunno was it was. It seemed like a Knockback Jinx but it was a hell of a lot stronger."

"Hmmm. Okay, take a deep breath now." Sirius did and Lily lifted her wand to his side. "_Emendan ossa,"_ she whispered, moving the tip slowly across his skin and feeling the heat run down her wand. Sirius groaned and she pulled her wand away, prodding his skin again to see if the spell had worked. "Better?"

"Yeah," Sirius nodded. "Thanks. It's warmer when you did it than Remus. Is it supposed to be like that?"

"Damn if I know," Lily admitted. Sirius laughed and Lily smiled at him. "You want me to look at your leg?"

"Nah, my ankle's not broken. Sprained maybe, but unless you know a spell for that then I'll just wrap it when we get back."

"Alright." Lily stood up and offered Sirius her hand, which he took. She pulled him up and they resumed walking, Sirius buttoning his shirt as they went.

"So really, where'd you learn that?" Sirius asked a little while later. "I can't imagine why you'd need it."

Lily took a deep breath as she remembered the first time she used the spell, huddled in the bushes behind Severus' house with a book of his mother's, running her wand across his broken arm. There were fingerprint bruises around his wrist and she knew that his father had done it, but when she asked him he just looked at her. She got her first letter from the Ministry that evening, and it wasn't the last. Sometimes Severus managed to knick his mother's wand so Lily wouldn't get in trouble, but not often. Lily had become rather good at that spell since Third Year.

"Like I told you, I learned it from a book."

"But why? When on earth would you need that spell?"

Lily looked sideways at Sirius. There was no way he'd want to know that she'd learned that spell treating Severus, and she didn't want to tell him. So instead she just shook her head. "It doesn't matter why." Sirius raised his eyebrows curiously, but when Lily didn't say anything, he let it go.

"You fought pretty well back there, by the way," Sirius said, nudging Lily's arm a little bit. "Much better than I'd expect a Prefect to be able to duel."

Lily smirked. "I may not have as much experience picking fights as you and the rest of your lot, but I know how to defend myself."

"We do not _pick fights," _Sirius said indignantly.

"Rubbish. You and Potter will start a fight at the slightest provocation."

"Ah, but there _is _always a provocation."

Lily scoffed. "Anything is a provocation to you two. You want it to be."

Sirius shrugged. "Eh. The provocation might be enough when we're bored," he admitted, "but those fights are never really the bad ones. The bad ones are always Slytherins, or some other useless blighters that have a problem with us and just genuinely need an arse-kicking."

Lily murmured but didn't reply, her mind flickering back to the fight by the lake. Had that been just because they'd been bored? She thought of a handful of other fights between them and Severus, ones that she'd seen from first taunt to when she a teacher or some other Prefect finally managed to break them up, and she knew that was the case for a good bit of them.

As they neared Gryffindor Tower, Lily brushed that line of thought away and turned to Sirius again. "I guess I should say thanks, by the way. If it had turned into a fight with just me against the four of them, I'd be in the hospital wing right now."

"Four against one are no kind of odds. I'm sure the slimeballs still would have taken them, but you did well for yourself against Cowings and… and Halsley."

Lily noticed Sirius trip over his brother's name but she didn't say anything. She was pleased with herself for how she'd handled Cowings and Halsley, when his wand had been pointed at her. She was sure though that, if Regulus had been really aiming to attack her, he could have gotten a spell in before she Disarmed him and she wouldn't have come out nearly as well then.

"I guess," she conceded as they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady and Sirius gave the password. "You against Mulciber seemed brutal though. You made it out well, too."

Sirius chuckled as they stepped through. "Yeah, I've had years of practice throwing spells at Mulciber."

James looked up when he heard his friend's voice come through the portrait hole. Peter, Remus, and he were settled at a table in the back of the Common Room, books laid out around them but not actually being read. All four Marauders had free period at this time, but Sirius had left quite a while back, complaining of boredom and deciding a trip to the kitchens was in order. James was surprised to see him walking in with Lily Evans. His stomach flipped for the second time that day and on instinct he reached for his hair, but he stopped when he noticed Sirius limping. When he took a better look, both Sirius and Lily looked worse for wear; Sirius had a cut underneath his eye with a drop of blood still dripping from it, and there was a large bruise blossoming along Lily's neck.

James murmured to Remus and Peter and nodded at Sirius and Lily, standing as the two reached the table.

"What the bloody hell happened?"

"What do you think happened? Slytherins," Sirius told them.

"What'd they do?" Remus asked.

"I ran into some of them getting into it with Lily on the fourth floor, by the Room of Staircases. I went to help, they started throwing curses, I saved the day." Sirius smiled, looking really rather proud of himself, but Lily scoffed before he could accept any praise.

"_Please," _she started. "I would hardly call it saving the day, considering that I single-handedly did three of them and _still_ had to mend your bones."

"Three of them?" Peter repeated, and Lily was a little pleased to note the impressed looks on their faces. She smirked and Sirius nodded it was true, but then James backtracked a bit and repeated angrily, "_They broke your bones?"_

"Just some cracked ribs, mate. Nothing bad."

Remus looked at Lily again. "You know how to mend bones?"

"Yeah," Sirius said. "She's shockingly good at it, too. Won't tell me why she knows how."

Remus raised his eyebrows at Lily and she shrugged. She wasn't trying to be modest, but it wasn't a story she was likely to tell to Remus either, despite the fact that they were friends.

"Aren't you just overflowing with surprises, Evans?" James smiled at Lily and it was easy to pick up the old flirtation in his voice. Lily's thoughts stuttered a bit and she looked away from James quickly, not knowing how she wanted to react. Yes, he'd flirted with her since they'd been back, but it was usually more direct and easier to deflect with some witty retort. She felt awkward clamoring for a comeback this time, and she was grateful when Pettigrew spoke up.

"Who was it then?"

Lily shot a look at Sirius, thinking instantly of the younger Black. "Mulciber, of course. When is there ever a fight without him in it? Then Halsley, Cowings…"

"And Regulus," Sirius finished. There was a hard look on Sirius' face when Lily and James both looked at him. He was furious, yes, but it was much deeper than that.

"Shit, Sirius," Peter murmured.

"Regulus?" James repeated in shock.

"_He's fifteen!"_ Remus exclaimed.

Sirius scowled, walking around Lily and throwing himself into the empty chair at the table. "Yeah. I've been out of that house three months and look what's happening."

"Padfoot, come on…"

"No. Fuck it. I mean, it's not like he's my brother anymore anyways, right?" Sirius shook his head, his empty smile fading and the look on his face getting harder to read by the instant. As he turned toward the window, and the other three boys shared a weighted look. They all knew how Sirius was about his brother. This was bad.

James had sat back down and Lily, still standing at the edge of the table, felt horribly intrusive. If this was her brooding about Petunia, Lily definitely wouldn't have wanted any of them to be there. Mumbling a goodbye to the table and another thank you to Sirius, she walked away, leaving the table quiet and strained. Peter picked up his quill and stuck the end in his mouth, unsuccessfully trying to make the situation better by going back to his work like nothing was the matter. James and Remus sat for several long minutes looking back and forth from Sirius to each other, not knowing what to say.

Sirius stayed staring out the window, his arms crossed over his chest. Even after James and Remus went back to their work, Sirius stayed for more than an hour, unmoving, his eyes lost somewhere between the glass of the window and everything outside it.

_A/N: You know what, yeah, I am trying to give you Regulus Black feels this early on in the story. Because Regulus Black is a heartbreakingly tragic little shit, and also because Sirius. Also, next time I think it's a good idea, remind how fucking hard fight scenes are to write. That nearly killed me. This update is actually coming in a semi-reasonable amount of time, so yey!_

_Reviews will motivate me to write the next chapter quicker. I hope you liked it! (I'm really proud of this chapter, okay?)_


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